BioWare Issues Verbal Backhand to Straight Male Gamer

Titles like Dragon Age and Mass Effect have solidified BioWare’s status as a company that’s not afraid to put romance into their games. And not just any romance: the player is free to have romances of any kind they like, be they heterosexual, homosexual, interracial, or in some cases, interspecies. It’s a progressive, refreshing, and unfortunately rare stance to take in today’s gaming world, and BioWare has been rightly rewarded for it.

There’s one demographic, though, that’s not going to take it sitting down anymore: The Straight Male Gamer. One such fellow was brave enough to speak out on behalf of all Straight Male Gamers on the BioWare forums, and he had this to say:

I don’t think many would argue with the fact that the overwhelming majority of RPG gamers are indeed straight and male. Sure, there are a substantial amount of women who play video games, but they’re usually gamers who play games like The Sims, rather than games like Dragon Age. That’s not to say there isn’t a significant number of women who play Dragon Age and that BioWare should forgo the option of playing as a women altogether, but there should have been much more focus in on making sure us male gamers were happy.

Incredible. It’s like he actually believes that standing up for the most privileged, pandered-to demographic of all is somehow a noble cause. BioWare, showing unprecedented tact of restraint, responded (in part):

The romances in the game are not for “the straight male gamer”. They’re for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don’t need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant… and that’s ignoring the idea that they don’t have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The “rights” of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent “right” to get more options than anyone else.

There was actually a lot more to it, and I highly recommend reading it, so you can find a lot more of the exchange in the link below. But that about sums it up. Consider this kid told.